For the past few years, Jared Leto has been quite a familiar name in superhero movies. Although not for good reasons, he is always seen caught in the limelight negatively for poor portrayals of his characters.
The most notable one is the film Suicide Squad where his acting as the Joker failed to reach the benchmark created by the late Heath Ledger miserably.
Recently, Leto has expanded his superhero portrayals in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Morbius, where he is criticised almost for all the previous mistakes he made before and an overall disappointing direction of the film.
Leto plays the titular character Michael Morbius, a famed biochemist suffering from a rare blood disease, seeking a cure for himself and others suffering from the same illness. He experiments on his DNA by combining bat DNA grants him vampire-esque abilities while healing the disease.
However, the cure comes at a cost with a thirst for human blood, and he finds it hard to control. He decides not to reveal this newfound treatment to the world, but someone from his family suffering from the same disease grabs the cure by force and accepts the bloodlust trait as his new ability.
Now Morbius finds himself in a dilemma - accept the identity of a living vampire, or defeat the vampire and save humans from being his prey.
In comic books, Morbius is introduced as a villain from the rogues’ gallery of Spider-man, who also becomes an ally of the superhero later on. Sony Pictures included Morbius in their Spider-man universe after collaborating with Marvel Studios on three Spider-man films and introducing Venom in two films from their production.
Though Morbius was meant to be a horror-themed superhero movie, Sony failed to depict its potential.
The film’s plot is generic for a superhero movie - a tormenting superhero, his friend turning into the main villain, and a father figure of the hero portrayed by a famed actor.
After many years of superhero genre movies and their success, this archetype of the plot is not enough to attract an audience nowadays.
Also, as a horror-themed film, Morbius was supposed to have the visceral depiction of vampires hunting humans for blood like other vampire-themed films, which the audience generally expects. But attempt to release the movie with a PG-13 rating made the potential horrifying scenes dull, losing their horror elements.
The acting was also sub-par and failed to meet expectations. Leto’s portrayal of Morbius was cliché and lacked its purpose as a superhero.
The whole film was confusing, and the audience found it hard to understand the new superhero’s bigger purpose other than defeating his surrogate brother. The brother, played by Matt Smith, is the only actor whose acting was enjoyable.
Still, director Daniel Espinosa failed to use the ‘Doctor Who’ actor’s potential in this film which was pretty evident.
Weak plot, Jared Leto’s repeated failure in superhero movies, and banal use of CGI and other special effects made Morbius fail as a worth-watching superhero film and turned it into another source of internet memes.
Considering the shortcomings, the time after Morbius’s release isn’t really the ‘Morbing Time’ for Jared Leto and his superhero movie career.
